Development of the Balkan Countries: Where Does the European Responsibility Lie?

At this stage in its development, Europe faces special challenges. A united Europe, of the form that we might describe as an ‘open workshop’, is a challenge for 21^st century management, to create a peace-oriented and prosperous Europe. The principles of solidarity, sustainability and support applied within Europe are precious contributions to global strategies. What can the Balkan experience offer? The region is rich in natural resources and labour potential for accelerated economic and agricultural development. The European and Asian civilizations meet in this region. It offers labour and production potential as well as 60 million food consumers and important tourist destinations. The Balkan challenge is to utilize the European model of development and the forthcoming period must be used to prepare for membership of the EU. In the meantime the region must take advantage of local free trade zones, encourage team work amongst domestic and foreign experts on agricultural and rural development, reform education at all levels, launch well focused programmes of agricultural and rural development, complete the process of transition and of general privatization, create domestic brands with labels offering geographical origin and ensure that changes in agricultural policy are consistent with the direction of the EU's CAP.     

Feasibility of risk‐based inspections in organic farming: results from a probabilistic model

A risk‐based inspection system might improve the efficiency of the organic farming certification system and ultimately provide a basis for increased competitiveness of this sector. This requires the definition of an effective inspection procedure that allows statistical evaluation of critical risk factors for noncompliance. In this article, we present a study based on data from selected control bodies in five European countries that is aimed at determining the feasibility of risk‐based inspections in the organic sector according to the data that are currently routinely recorded. Bayesian networks are used for identification of the factors that can affect the risk of noncompliance. The results show that previous/concurrent noncompliant behavior explains most of the risk, and that the risk increases with farm size and the complexity of their operations. The data currently recorded by control bodies appear to be insufficient to establish an effective risk‐based approach to these inspections.     

Do Danes and Italians Rate Life Satisfaction in the Same Way? Using Vignettes to Correct for Individual‐Specific Scale Biases

Self‐reported life satisfaction is highly heterogeneous across similar countries, a phenomenon that may be explained by the different scales and benchmarks that people use to evaluate themselves. This study uses cross‐sectional data gathered from older populations in ten European countries to compare estimates from a model that assumes reporting styles are constant across respondents against estimates from a model in which anchoring vignettes help correct for individual‐specific scale biases. Variations in response scales explain much of the difference in the raw data. Moreover, the cross‐country ranking in life satisfaction depends significantly on scale biases.     

Bank credit constraints for women‐led SMEs: Self‐restraint or lender bias?

We test the existence of possible gender biases affecting firm behavior in demanding and obtaining bank credit using a cross‐country sample of European small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). We show consistent evidence that female‐led firms are more likely than their male counterparts to refrain from applying for loans. When they apply, female‐led enterprises do not seem to face gender discrimination from the lender. Interestingly, however, signs of gender bias appear to arise during the upside phase of the economy. Overall, our study provides support for policy actions aimed at reducing the frictions faced by women‐led SMEs when accessing credit markets.     

Mutual Fund Incentive Fees: Determinants and Effects

We investigate the how and why of performance fee provisions in a free contracting environment such as the Italian mutual fund market until 2006. We find weak support for the hypothesis that these provisions emerge as an economically efficient solution in a rational asset management industry plagued by asymmetric information. They appear to emerge mainly as the product of strategic pricing by asset managers wishing to ease market competition, leverage on investors' sentiment, and hedge their cost structure. Alternatively, fears that managers may opportunistically alter funds' investment policies to maximize the option value embedded in the incentive provisions appear unjustified.     

World Trade in Used Automobiles: A Gravity Analysis of Japanese and US Exports*

We estimate a gravity model of Japanese and US exports of used automobiles that incorporates an original, ordered measure of protection in global, used automobile markets. The model confirms that, overall, protection by our measure is suppress‐ive and often statistically significant and that what we term ‘Grubel income effects’ are present. However, Japanese export behavior appears to differ in some important respects from that of the USA, with distance and protection levels being less significant and left‐hand side driving patterns being a critical explanatory variable.     

关于首次销售规则的思考

首次销售规则是确定多层销售货物的成交价格的一种估价方法。欧盟、美国和日本均接受首次销售估价法。运用此估价法比按成交价格估价,进口商能够节省高达50%的从价关税。     

Charting service ecosystems flexibility: A museum setting

The service ecosystems perspective has rarely been applied in literature tackling the nonprofit and voluntary sectors. Service ecosystems are defined as self-adjusting systems of resource-integrating actors connected by shared institutional arrangements and mutual value creation. By addressing service ecosystems flexibility (i.e., the ability of service ecosystems to adjust to changes), this article seeks to provide a framework that charts service ecosystems flexibility and explains its pillars, as well as the ways in which new technologies affect visitors and arts. The study focuses on service ecosystems changes initiated by technology, visitors, and organizers, aimed at increasing the level of museum visitors' experience. The study is performed in a service ecosystem comprising a sculpture arts exhibition and its online extensions in the form of Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter accounts. Collected data consist of interviews with the exhibition visitors and organizers, participative observations performed in the exhibition context, and online posts and media coverage related to the exhibition. The research process is iterative and abductive, continuously combining insights that emerge from the literature and the analyzed data through triangulation. The main findings emphasize organizers' pivotal role as the actor that orchestrates value cocreation in the service ecosystem by steering this process based on emerging changes. Additionally, the findings flesh out the role of technology in a service ecosystem and offer a more comprehensive view of service ecosystems flexibility.     

Used automobile protection and trade: Gravity and ordered probit analysis

There is a great deal of protection against used automobile imports in many countries of the world that has gone largely unnoticed in the trade policy literature. Indeed, there has been no recent attempt to systematically analyze the determinants of used automobile trade and the role of protection in this trade. This paper makes a preliminary attempt, introducing an ordered measure of protection levels in 132 countries. A gravity model of used automobile exports from the United States shows that protection measures against used automobile import have a statistically-significant, suppressive effect on trade flows. An ordered probit analysis of the protection measures themselves points to new automobile production interests as a key factor behind used automobile protection. Other relevant explanatory factors of protection are income levels, democratic regime, transitional status, WTO membership, and income distribution.First version received: December 2002/Final version received: August 2003The authors would like to thank Ken Button, Michael Ferrantino, Kingsley Haynes, the late Don Lavois, Keith Maskus, Arvind Panagariya, Baldev Raj, Thomas Strattman, Roger Stough, Wendy Takacs, Michael Walsh, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments and discussions.     

Bayesian Value-at-Risk with product partition models

In this paper we propose a novel Bayesian methodology for Value-at-Risk computation based on parametric Product Partition Models. Value-at-Risk is a standard tool for measuring and controlling the market risk of an asset or portfolio, and is also required for regulatory purposes. Its popularity is partly due to the fact that it is an easily understood measure of risk. The use of Product Partition Models allows us to remain in a Normal setting even in the presence of outlying points, and to obtain a closed-form expression for Value-at-Risk computation. We present and compare two different scenarios: a product partition structure on the vector of means and a product partition structure on the vector of variances. We apply our methodology to an Italian stock market data set from Mib30. The numerical results clearly show that Product Partition Models can be successfully exploited in order to quantify market risk exposure. The obtained Value-at-Risk estimates are in full agreement with Maximum Likelihood approaches, but our methodology provides richer information about the clustering structure of the data and the presence of outlying points.